Response to Recent US Bills Limiting Pediatric Transition Care
GCCAN opposes the recent bills that have sprung up across the United States attempting to limit pediatric gender transition. GCCAN has spoken against blanket bans on treatment in the past, and continues to do so. While oppose these bills, the concern about the current state of gender medicine is warranted.
In the past decade, gender health consumers have received inadequate care and guidance from medical professionals. Recently, access to gender care has been treated like a commodity instead of medicine. Surgeries have been marketed on social media like cigarette companies used to market tobacco to children. The desire to create access and acceptance for trans medicine is positive. However, doctors have been one-sidedly promoting transition while neglecting to fulfill the duties of medicine - long-term studies of outcomes and risks, holistic understanding of a patient as a person, and providing a full range of treatment options. When doctors fail to provide this, people get hurt. GCCAN has been advocating for a more holistic model of gender care, and will continue to do so.
As the members of GCCAN are well aware, the experience of gender dysphoria is real and painful to live with. Gender dysphoria, and the most successful way to treat it, varies with the individual. Physical transition works very well for some who undertake it. For others, even for those fully transitioned or detransitioned, the feelings of dysphoria may still remain. In all cases, people suffering from dysphoria deserve supportive treatment from care providers who should have the ability to make decisions without having their hands tied by oppressive laws.
Attempts by state legislatures to ban the provision of gender care services to minors are an unwelcome interference by the government into the relationship between a doctor and a patient. Is it the case that some gender care providers have become too lax in their provision of medicine and surgery to minors? We believe the answer is yes. We also believe the way to address this is for the gender care industry to adopt practices that are supportive of the long-term outcomes of their patients, and to work with gender dysphoric youth to achieve holistic wellness outcomes.
Reactionary legislation that heartlessly eliminates gender care options is not the right answer to the problem of an undisciplined industry. We need more than all-or-nothing choices. GCCAN does not support any legislation that attacks or criminalizes gender care providers. Any legislator who truly wants to help the families of gender dysphoric youth should concentrate on making gender care providers more accountable rather than stopping care altogether.
By the same token, gender dysphoric youth need more than a rubber stamp for hormones and surgery. They also need support to access the care they need to manage their gender dysphoria and live full lives. The affirmative-only model is correctly perceived as rushing children onto the irreversible track of gender transition. It is clear that some of these youth will end up satisfied with transitioning, but a significant number of them will not. The number of detransitioned youth is growing. This fact represents a failure of doctors to provide comprehensive assessment and care.
These laws must be defeated. At the same time, gender care providers must reflect on what has instigated this reaction.Too many children are being ushered into transition without there being adequate discovery and treatment of other mental health concerns, unhealthy environmental factors (like bullying or sexual abuse), or concomitant traumas. We should be guided by science and understand that desistance is common in gender dysphoric youth. Transition comes with undeniable physical downsides, and we should be cautious about consigning any child to a lifetime of hormone therapy and infertility. However, some children, even with holistic care, will inevitably transition. These children deserve access to the highest-quality care. Decisions about medical care should be between consumers and their team of care providers.
In conclusion: GCCAN opposes these laws, but recognizes they have sprung up at least partially in response to inadequate care by medical professionals. Lawmakers should remove themselves from an inappropriate intrusion into medical care, and medical professionals should take responsibility for the long-term wellbeing of the consumers they serve.